Schools

West Deptford Football Field House Plans Scuttled ... So What Now?

The West Deptford school board shot down a proposal to pay for new locker rooms for its football team—but the conditions onsite are still in disrepair, some say.

When the local school board voted down a proposal to privately fund the construction of a new field house for the West Deptford High School football team, a number of arguments were provided—that the provisional presentation could expose the district to Title IX liability; that the field house should be accessible to more than just football players; that it would incur unnecessary operational costs in the future.

But testimonials from parents of student-athletes and others described the current locker-room conditions as unhealthy, which is the last thing that a cash-strapped body putting off $3.5 million in capital improvements needed to hear.

'Deplorable' conditions

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The idea was first pitched to board president Christopher Strano in February as a redress of high school locker-room conditions that some residents at the board meeting described as “deplorable.” 

According to the district agenda at its March 2013 meeting, a group of football boosters, led by builder Ed Houghton—who also constructed a concession stand and scoreboard for the district—would have donated

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the funds, materials and labor to construct and equip a building on Board property, and to donate said funds, materials and labor, and the completed building, to the Board, in order to enhance the school district’s athletic facilities.

The field house would have honored Nicholas Brandemarti Jr., a  township resident who died in the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Any action on the proposal was conditional upon the board approving a site plan presented by the organizers.

No shovel would touch the ground without “acceptable evidence from the community group that there is adequate funding to complete the project,” Strano said at the meeting; no movement without at least 50 percent of the total project having been secured.

“This was never on our radar in this economic climate,” Strano told Patch. “Once they got the site plans done, once they got the approvals, they’d have to raise 50 percent before they touch the ground. That’s a big commitment on them.”

Nonetheless, the conditional resolution failed by a 5-3 vote in March, and the board is “kind of at a crossroads to see what would make it pass,” Strano said.

“I think some people are just against it totally,” he said. “[But if] you start turning down gifts, people are going to stop giving them.”

'Zero financial impact'

One consideration voiced at the meeting by residents was whether operating the field house would incur unnecessary additional utility costs.

Superintendent Kevin Kitchenman told the public that the district engineer calculated a good-faith estimate of about $4,000 to $5,000 in electric use, but that it could be far less, since a lot of the electricity currently used in the high school gym would be used in the proposed building.

"It’s not really an increase," Kitchenman said; "it’s a shift in where the electricity would be used."

Former township committeeman and current West Deptford golf coach John Cobb defended the project as a commitment to “the most successful extracurricular program in the school’s history.”

He criticized discussion from the Board as “trying to change the argument” on political grounds, and cited his involvement as partisan motivation  for opponents of the plan.

“I have a lot of people involved that, for the life of them, they can’t think of how you possibly could turn down this substantial a gift to a deserving program in addition to the economy like this,” he said.

“I don’t know what we’re getting out of this other than we’re going to have to work our tails off to raise a quarter of a million dollars.”

If approved, the field house would have been scheduled for a September 2014 opening, and would have "zero financial impact" on the district budget, he said.

“All we were looking for was approval of a concept, and if the concept materialized, we were willing to meet all the conditions, all the things that would take the school board liability out of it,” Cobb said.

But some in the audience, including resident Cheryl Carroll, criticized the plan as potentially incurring future costs for the district.

“If it’s about the kids, we’ve already dumped enough debt on the kids and federally even more,” Carroll said.

“Everything that was mentioned up here, not one thing makes me want to think about the field house," she said. "We don’t have the money. Not even for $5,000 a year for the electric bill, the water bill, whatever.”

'Long-term, lasting effects'

Although the conditional measure failed by a 5-3 vote, several opponents of the proposal among board members were not keen to discuss their perspectives after the fact. Board member David Kline agreed to go on the record to explain his personal opposition.

“On the surface, a free building is fantastic,” Kline said; “however, when you then factor in all the underlying things that you have to take into account, then there’s a bigger discussion that needs to happen.”

Kline said that his chief concern was that the construction of a boys-only, football-specific facility could expose the district to a Title IX lawsuit.

Beyond that, he said, any ongoing operational costs from running power and water to the building could adversely affect the district budget at a time when dollars for higher-priority capital improvements are already scarce.

“Budget is a huge issue,” Kline said. “That really has put us in a pinch, and we really have had to make some very difficult decisions on what programs and educational things to put money into.”

As for the testimonials on the condition of the current facilities, Kline said, “I wasn’t aware of the locker room being an issue before people brought it up at that meeting.

“Right before I was sworn in, I asked that I get a look at the buildings,” he said. “A group of us went through the schools…[with the] grounds management team, and we never discussed any issues with the locker room.

“If there is an initiative, we need to be sure that we’re addressing health and safety concerns foremost,” he said.

Kline also said that he wasn’t convinced that there was a popular groundswell behind the proposal.

“We had three [school board] meetings in a row where the room was packed, and I have to tell you that 95 percent of those people were very much against this building,” Kline said.

“The only people I heard in support of this building were at the March meeting; there was at least one other meeting where not a single person was in favor of it.

“For me, it came down to [the fact that] I have to make a decision about something that can have long-term, lasting effects, both positive and negative, for the school, and in the timeframe that I was given,” Kline said.

'No reason to reject this'

Cobb told Patch this week that the field house project has “no future right now.”

He was discouraged at the arguments that defeated it, and said that nothing has been done to address the issues that underscore the need for a new locker room at WDHS.

“What we were there for was an initial approval of a concept,” Cobb said. “The reason the concept needed to get approved was that we wanted criteria [for the project] as much as they did. The people (who) voted against that had nothing to do with what we were there for approval.”

Cobb pointed out that any Title IX issues should be moot since the girls locker room at WDHS was renovated as recently as “four or five years ago.” He also said that use of the building could have been expanded to address what he described as "the horrendous condition of the outdoor restrooms at the high school."

Even if the field house is not the solution, former board member Donald Hicks told the body, the district has to act to improve the conditions of the locker room.

“It’s old, it’s unhealthy, kids are getting sick,” Hicks said. “There are skin issues; they have a tough time keeping the equipment dry. [The] equipment hasn’t improved in 35 years.”

"If you ask any common-sense person," Cobb said, "there was no reason to reject this,” 


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